If you go down to the wood today...

Last week we explored the theme of Goldilocks and The Three Bears.

Continuing with this term's theme of traditional tales, we learned the song When Goldilocks Went to the House of the Bears:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Q8L85VPQs

We put sound effects to the song using instruments, thinking about low and high sounds.

Which instrument would you choose for Daddy Bear's voice? Which would you choose for Baby Bear's voice? Which one would you choose for Mummy Bear's voice?

We thought about different sized bowls, plates, cups and spoons and who they would be for. We concentrated on the language small, smaller, smallest and big, bigger, biggest.

We thought since the bears didn't have any porridge, they might like a teddy bear's picnic of jam sandwiches. We used fine motor skills of spreading and cutting to make own sandwiches, and practiced writing our names on our own paper bags.   We especially liked eating them!

 

We read a book called That's not My Teddy

We thought about different words to describe textures. The children had some really good ideas.

"spikey"  "rough"  "smooth"  "soft"  "fluffy"  "squidgy"  "bumpy"

We chose different materials to make our own textured bears.

This week we are exploring the story The Three Little Pigs. We are thinking about characters, settings and repetitive chants. We are practising retelling stories with actions.  We are also experimenting with how to build the sturdiest structures and how to make our buildings even better, as well as which is the best joining materials for our cardboard creations.

Don't forget it is Book Week this week and the children can dress up as their favourite book character on Friday. Tomorrow (Tuesday) there will be a book sale in Nursery and on Thursday we invite you to come in to read with your child at 11.30. We will be giving out a new Book Start book to all your children.

The Queen of Hearts

This week in Nursery, we have been thinking about people who love us and what they do for us.

We tied this in to the nursery rhyme The Queen of Hearts.

We looked at photos of each other's families, talked about who was special to us and why. Thank you for all your photos. The children have loved sharing them!

We made paper families and talked about who was in our family.

We learned the nursery rhyme The Queen of Hearts. A naughty knave kept taking her tarts and we had to say how many were left. We thought we would help the poor queen by cooking some more.

We learned about kneading, squeezing, stirring, squeezing, mixing, chopping and cutting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now we are looking forward to eating them!

We played with the queen's castle.

 Outdoors we weaved patterns on the fence to help our fine motor skills.

We have been thinking about esafety this week and how to keep safe when we play online. We read a story about Smartie the Penguin (http://www.childnet.com/resources/smartie-the-penguin    EYFS version) who found out that if anything unusual pops up on the screen when we are playing online, we need to show mummy or daddy.

In phonics we have been thinking about words that rhyme, changing nursery rhymes that we know to have new rhyming endings and having fun making rhyming strings (cat, hat, mat, bat etc.)

Next week is half term so have lots of fun and we look forward to seeing you on Monday 20th February.

 

Year of The Rooster

As the children have had such a lovely time engaging in our Chinese New Year topic, we have continued it for another week.

We have developed our fine motor skills by 'taking our scissors for a walk' to make a lantern and using tweezers and chopsticks to pick up 'noodles'.

 We used the Chinese animal masks in our phonics sessions, sounding out the names of animals to cross the river.

 We read a story called Clever Sticks about trying hard and keep going to reach your goal. Then we tried hard to pick up biscuits with chopsticks which wars really difficult but we kept trying...

 and trying and trying until we reached our goal!

 

 We made Chinese Money Packets and copied Chinese writing to decorate. We had to think about where the sticky tape needed to go to make sure there were no holes and our money did not fall out. We tested our finished product and thought about what we needed to do next to make sure that it did its job. We are looking forward to eating our chocolate coins at home!

We have a Super Hero writing area. When we are busy writing, we can put on costumes so we can be super hero writers. Our teachers are pleased to see our amazing writing.

In maths we are practising counting, ordering numbers, going on number treasure hunts in the outdoor garden and using our numbers to make dragon puppets.

Next week we are thinking about People Who Love us to tie in with Valentine's Day.

Please could your child bring in a photo of their family so we can talk about people who love us and what special things they do for us. We will also be making jam tarts.